iuoma.org – Interested in Mail-Art?

Ruud Janssen with Carlo Pittore

TAM Mail-Interview Project
(WWW Version)

Started on: 10-5-1995
RJ: Welcome to this mail-interview. First let me ask you the traditionalquestion. When did you get involved in the mail-art network?

Reply on:22-5-1995
CP: In response to your query, I began my Network mail art activity in1978, encouraged by Bern Porter. Although I had been decorating myletters with pen & ink drawings and water colors for years, inspired nodoubt by Vincents’ letters to Theo, I also learned that drawing on myletters was good practice.

When Bern Porter encouraged me to send an original postcard off to amail art exhibition, I was ripe for mail art. Not only had I been aphilatelist as a kid, but I was eager for community, and was anappreciator of intimate mailed communication.

By 1980, when I published the first issue of ME Magazine, I was a realpart of this expanding Network.

RJ: What was your ME Magazine about? Is it still alive?

Reply on 6-6-1995
(Carlo’s answer came in the form of a booklet made out of 12 different colors forming the rainbow. He also wrote below his answer: “I’d like tosee you reprint this colorful letter as sent…..what?”)

CP: I began ME Magazine in the summer of 1980 after the insult ofpaying an entrance fee to participate in an exhibition in Rockport,Maine. Similar work had already been accepted to hang in an elegantMadison Avenue Gallery in New York City, so when I went to theexhibition with a friend, I was shocked and humiliated that they hadfailed to inform me of rejection & that I was paying for the cheese andwine at the opening! That their rejection was merely subjective, and notaesthetic. I wanted everyone to know that I would never pay to exhibitagain, that their decisions were strictly subjective anyway, and that I nolonger would pursue the carrot at the end of the stick, that in art, Iwould not allow museum curators to control my life.

Also, I had spent the summer painting self-portraits, and makingself-portrait collages – so it seemed that as I was immersed in myself,and yet wanted mail art community, I would call my little publicationME, since it was about ME, yet a put down of ME-ism, and of course,ME is the postal abbreviation of Maine. I enjoyed the pun, and when Iasked recipients to send me a dollar bill to share in my publicationcosts, Ray Johnson was right there, circling the ME in America on theone dollar bill. Some understood.

I filled the 1st issue of ME with my art collages on the theme of selfportraiture, included pertinent quotes on the self, a personalreminiscence of Bern Porter (who’s home I was spending the summer of1980 at, at his Institute for Advanced Thinking, in Belfast, Maine) andother items of concern to me. When I mailed copies of the publicationto Maine artists, and to mail artists, it was the mail artists whoresponded, not my local friends, and it was at that time that I realizedwho my real comrades were…. and when I returned to Manhattan inSeptember, I was a wholly confirmed mail artist.

I opened my mail art gallery, La Galleria dell’Occhio at 267 East TenthSt. NYC in December 1980 – (the first gallery in what became the hotEast Village art scene) – “a homage to Bern Porter” exhibition, andafter the 2nd issue of ME was published in the spring of 1981,essentially on the theme of movement (i.e. motion pictures, or movingpictures, & repetition as in artistamps, I introduced myself, my gallery,my art, and my correspondents addresses to my readers.

The third issue was a play on the theme of ME, on the idea of theuniversal ME. I also enclosed the documentation of the Bern Portermail art Exhibition which I curated, and, too, the additionalintroduction of my POST ME and Bern Porter Commemorative StampSeries. ME = WE.

The 4th issue was an audio cassette letter, of songs, etc. inspired byRod Summers. The 5th issue was devoted to ME, ETC, or METC – tomy Maine Art and Mail art communities, with articles by John Evans,John Jacob, Valery Oisteanu, Mark Petroff, Stephen Petroff, andRoland Legiardi – Laura; and a document of the International Mail ArtExhibition Salva La Campagna Romana in Montecelio, Italy, which Icurated in the summer of 1982, the Boxing international mail ArtExhibition of February/March 1983, with a critique by critic Judd Tully;a declaration of War against exhibitions changing entry fees; astatement on Independence as ME and Community, lists of participatingartists, a listing of mail art exhibitions etc. approaching, and othermiscellany.

Issue #6, “International Mail Art is the most important & mostsignificant Art movement in the world today” was the document of theMaine International Mail Art exhibition at the Maine Festival inBrunswick, Maine, August 1983. Included were two sheets of artistamps,a Cavellini sticker, a Ray Johnson piece, postcards by David Zack,David Cole, Epistolary Stud Farm, Robert Swiekiewicz, Volker Haman,Ubaldo Giacommuci, Stephen Petroff and Eric Finlay, with a series ofstamps by Michael Leigh, and Mark Melnicove.

Tony Ferro published issue #7 in Italy, including a piece that I wroteabout the frustration of rejection, following my exhibition of FIST -boxing painting at Buster Cleveland and Diane Sippell’s Gallery inNYC.

I have not yet published issue #8, but I am not prepared to say it willnot happen. But I must add, that I was hurt by G